Gran Turismo is a popular video game series that helped one man become a video game champion and racing star. His real-life story is being featured in the new movie Gran Turismo, which premieres in theatres nationwide on Friday. PopCulture.com recently spoke to Jann Mardenborough, who shared his reaction to his story being told on the big screen — and told us what it was like being part of the movie.
“It’s surreal. It hadn’t been done before, as far as I know, somebody playing themselves in a biopic, doing their own stunts,” Mardenborough, who is a co-producer and stunt driver on the film, exclusively told PopCulture. “I was fascinated at how things are put together. I’m into photography, so to be on set to see where the cameras are placed and knock in the pit lane, and then being on circuits and there’s cameras everywhere. Bits of information being told by the stunt coordinator, Steve Kelso, and we’re up 9/10 of the car. We’re pushing hard, doing 160 miles an hour, inches away from each other. It was a rush. It was a real rush. I really had great days with the whole production team, the stunt team as well. Loved it.”
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Mardenboroug, 31, began his racing career after winning a spot at the Gran Turismo Academy in 2011 by beating 90,000 competitors. During the last decade, Mardenborough has competed in multiple racing series all over the world. He spent most of his time in Japan and won the Japanese Formula 3 Vice Champion in 2016. It was around that time that Mardenborough heard rumblings about a movie being made about his life.
“I never focused much time on it, because I was racing,” he said. “And I was told maybe it’d happen, maybe not. As the years ticked by, it got more real. When I started getting scripts and being involved in scripts, I was like, ‘Ah, maybe this is actually going to happen.’ And then I had a lot of say. I was very thankful to the producers and scriptwriters, Jason Hall, that they wanted to know as much as possible, because they wanted to make sure it’s as real as possible. I was very fortunate with that, and I’ve been heavily involved ever since.”
Gran Turismo stars David Harbour, Orlando Bloom, Darren Barnet, Geri Halliwell, and Djimon Hounsou, as well as Gran Turismo video game creator Takehiro Hira and Archie Madekwe, who plays Mardenborough. When asked about Madekwe, Mardenborough said, “I met Archie for the first time in person at Silverstone, two months before being on set. He’d never been to a racetrack, never sat in a racing car. We did a load of photos and we spoke for hours.”
“So for him to experience a live test session at a racetrack, the noise, the cars, the smell before going to set, it was the perfect environment for him to know what to expect on set, because these cars were driving full gas, there’s noise, it’s full of adrenaline, it’s visceral,” he continued. “And Archie wanted to know everything about me, everything. So he was asking so many questions and I was happy to answer them because this person is portraying me in Gran Turismo. It’s me. And if I felt comfortable because he wanted to know a lot because he wanted to do the best job he could. And he has, he nailed it.”
